Today, we have our second series of poems for the third annual napomo at the dictionary project in honor of National Poetry Month. All month we will be posting poems written from bibliomanced dictionary project words. In an added twist, this year, two poets are writing to each word. We are discovering what happens in these pairings when two different minds and aesthetics hold space for the same word.

Poets Johanna Skibsrud and Matthew Schmidt have written on screw. Please enjoy their poems and feel free to write your own poem inspired by screwin the comments if you so desire. The actual piece my finger landed on when selecting the word was the image of a lagscrew below.

screw (skro͞o), n. [ME. screwe; OFr. escrone, hole in which the screw turns < L. scrobis, vulva], 1. a mechanical device used for fastening things together, consisting of a naillike cylinder of metal grooved in an advancing spiral, and usually having a slotted head: it penetrates only by being turned: male (or external) screw. 2. anything like such a device. 3. a hollow cylinder equipped with a spiral groove on its inner sufrace into which the male screw fits: female (or internal) screw. 4. the act of turning or twisting; turn of a screw. 5. a screw propeller. 6. [Chiefly British], a) a stingy person; miser. b) a crafty bargainer. 7. [Chiefly British], a bit of tobacco, etc. (in a twisted paper). 8. [Chiefly British] a worn-out horse. 9. {Slang], a prison guard. 10. [British Slang], salary. v.t. 1. to twist; turn; tighten. 2. to fasten, make secure, tighten, press, insert, etc. with or as with a screw or screws. 3. to contort; squeeze; twist out of natural shape: as, screw one’s face up. 4. to force to do something; compel, as if by using screws. 5. to extort or practice extortion on: as he screwed me out of money. v.i. 1. to come apart or go together by being turned or twisted in the manner of a screw: as, the lid screws on. 2. to be fitted for being put together or taken apart by a screw or screws. 3. to twist; turn; wind; have a motion like that of a screw. 4. to practice extortion.

Desire Must Be Taken Literally

What exists?

Already.

Even in darkness.

If not:

the idea of darkness.

Marked, therefore,

already, by

the idea of light.

What is there but that

to grow slowly

toward, or away?

What but that

to propel

that most

uncertain element,

the soul,

slowly toward

the idea of itself?

To hover, as above,

or outside of itself.

A question.

Toward which

the mind also turns

in a deliberate spiral—.

The mind, the simple

lag-screw

according to which

we conjoin,

and therefore

establish,

between that most

uncertain element,

from which we came,

and the world, which is

most certain, some

relation.

What, then, the soul,

but the simple

opening, carved

by the mind—

as it constructs,

like a joist or a beam,

upon which the idea

holds,

a further idea?
As it insists, if only

by virtue of its

continuous effort

to do so,

the possibility that

the mind will

also hold?

That it will still

be possible,

therefore—

if only

very briefly—

to suture to the

uncertain idea

a single real thing?

Johanna Skibsrud is the author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize winning novel, The Sentimentalists, a book of short fiction, This Will Be Difficult to Explain, and Other Stories, and two collections of poetry, Late Nights With Wild Cowboys and I Do Not Think That I Could Love a Human Being. A second novel, Quartet for the End of Time will be released in fall, 2014. She lives in Tucson.

Cyclical

Shades drawn—darkness crept scantly
scantily through slats—a cover of destiny
destination to which each day pours itself
out. Outside lined slats, thump of bass
an apartment adjacent in rhythm, enjoys
Saturday evening victuals, imbibes in whether
Sunday will ever step from shadow to show
itself, a difficult concept to grasp in utter
dark, that even through stars appear away
through several named spheres exiting the planet
seem on the verge of consummation, of consumption
in blackness which harnesses a vast swath
of earth, here, now, as somewhere else
someone else is sunning themselves by a rill
twisting grass blades, a tune upon lips
accompaniment to slow burble sluicing
submerged rock on its way to a place
any party herewith has been except tangentially
or rather mentally, in eye of idea
where a picture once seen must be
like this place where the rill—after turning
into other names, empties itself, finally
in an ever ebbing body that removes
all notion of meaning in here, now
until again a cycle is run and rain
falls on windows, behind shades
draws a party at an apartment indoors
bass fading into a dull thrum
in a different time when someone is idle
rill tricks, trickle thought into a coalescence
of sunburst over horizon, another contemplation commences.

Matthew Schmidt is an MFA candidate at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared in Asinine Poetry, Down in the Dirt, Eye On Life and The Missing Slate.